International visitor arrivals strong

International visitor statistics for Australia, for the year ending December 2018 show positive growth trends.

Key observations are as follows:

International visitor arrivals: 8,523,540 up 4.77 per cent, year on year.

International visitor nights: 273,793,318 up 3.79 per cent, year on year.

International visitor expenditure: $43.918b up 7.37 per cent, year on year.

Average international visitor expenditure: $5,153 up 2.48 per cent, year on year.

China and India key in-bound markets

The importance of visitor arrivals and length of stay from China was again reinforced, with 1.3m visitors staying for 58.78m nights – the visitor nights figure greater than the next three largest inbound markets combined, that accounted for 55.53m nights (in United Kingdom – 21.69m nights; India – 20.46m nights; and the United States of America – 13.38m). The continued emergence of India was reinforced, with an annual year on year growth rate in visitor numbers of 30.33 per cent to 336,000 visitors (appreciating this comes off a small base), although their average daily visitor expenditure is by far the lowest of all nations, at $81 per night.

Victoria’s pace of market share growth encouraging

Victoria again ranked a clear, but distant, second in terms of the market share of all international visitors to Australia gained, behind numbers achieved by New South Wales (NSW) – 96.20m visitors to NSW year on year and 72.87m visitors to Victoria. Pleasingly, Victoria’s rate of growth in the percentage of international visitors secured, is second only to the Australian Capital Territory (11.8 per cent – off a much smaller base of 5.2mvisitors) at 11.2 per cent. By comparison, NSW’s rate of growth was only 2.4 per cent.

Leakage to short-stay unregulated accommodation significant

Nights spent by international visitors in hotels, motels and resorts in Melbourne grew marginally, year on year, at 0.58 per cent to 6.062m nights. When considering nights spent in all accommodation categoriesacross Melbourne grew by 12.41 per cent over the same period, to 64.75m it isapparent leakage to short-stay unregulated accommodation is stillsignificant (appreciating that part of the reason for ‘leakage’ will be those guests staying with friends and relatives. Indeed, TAA (Vic)’s recent submission to the Victorian Government, detailing our thoughts on the next phase of the equitable regulation of short stay accommodation in Victoria referenced this fact, whennoting that the number of Airbnb listings in Melbourne has increased by 131.78 per cent, since 2016 to 20,406.

Positive trends for regional Victoria

Pleasingly, Victoria has experienced significant growth in the number of international visitor nights spend in hotels, motels and resorts, to the year-ended December 2018, to 744,666 nights, a growth of 32.49 per cent(appreciating, this also comes off a much smaller base and significant opportunities for regional dispersal of international visitors still exist – particularly when considering NSW had 3,16m visitors visit regional NSW).

Please click on the link below to review the full TAA summary of results: